Category: contributor

This essay has been extracted from The Historian and her Craft Collected Essays and Lectures of Romila Thapar recently published by the Oxford University Press and republished here with permission. The first step towards the crystallisation of what we today call Hinduism was born in the consciousness of being the amorphous, subordinate, other. In a sense…

The series of events that has unfolded, and is still unfolding, at Jawaharlal Nehru University, one of the premier institutions of higher education and research of this country, is symptomatic of a deep-seated, mostly unconscious, malaise. From a distance, it appears that it is the internal conflict between two opposing political ideologies – “left” and…

Jawaharlal Nehru University Students' Union organised a massive march to MHRD on February 20. Students participated in thousands, demanding removal of Vice Chancellor Jagadesh Kumar Mamidala. The students claim that the VC has been trying to systematically destroy the varsity. His policies, from seat cuts to decimation of reservations and deprivation points, scrapping GSCASH, and now…

U R Ananthamurthy was one of the first writes who endorsed the idea of Indian Writers' Forum. Here we publish an excerpt from his autobiography Suragi, translated by S R Ramakrishna. This is from the chapter "At the Sahitya Akademi and National Book Trust". Ananthamurthy was the President of the Sahitya Akademi — the national…

The pride and valour of a community, among other glorified stories of our pristine past, continue to be the central preoccupation of our modern life. This has gained currency in the recent past, as one witnessed in the controversies that plagued the film Padmaavat. The violence, chaos, and confusion, fomented by the Karni Sena,…

Former Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union’s (JNUSU) Vice-President and well known student activist, Shehla Rashid was reportedly forced to deactivate her Facebook account after some Muslim youths issued multiple rape threats and sent hate messages to her. Rashid’s “crime” was to speak in support of the freedom to have an interfaith marriage; she raised…

The third national convention of Dakshinayan Abhiyan was recently held in Wardha and Nagpur on 29 and 30 January 2018. The Dakshinayan Abhiyan is a movement launched by Padma Shri Ganesh Devy, a scholar, linguist, and an activist. According to Devy, it is larger than a literary festival. The convention, SAMAS-2018, kicked off on 29 January…

I was in Gajendragada in Rona taluk to meet some friends. I passed through Nelajeri, a small village in Yalaburga Taluk. This region is known for its wheat, onions, pepper, and other things found in the rainfed regions of Karnataka. Most of the youth from the village work for a daily wage in the steel…

The farmers of Rajasthan, under the leadership of All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS), had staged a historical protest in Sikar district in September 2017. The farmers had put forth 12 major demands, to which the government had agreed to then. Excluding the mobility of necessary goods and services, the entire district was shut…

To imagine that ruling party members would take the Indian National Flag and use it as a statement for a demonstration supporting rapists was impossible even for die hard cynics till a few years ago. That Indian patriarchy found it easier to hit the woman survivor than the rapist was of course an established…

Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje on Monday told the assembly that the government was not proceeding with much-criticised "Criminal Laws (Rajasthan Amendment) Bill, 2017" which was termed a "black law" and a "gag" order. The bill was tabled in last Assembly session in October to replace an ordinance promulgated on September 7. Under it,…

Shambhu Lal Regar, who is lodged in Jodhpur central prison for brutally killing Mohammad Afrazul Khan, has allegedly released two inflammatory videos from the high-security jail with an aim to vitiate the communal atmosphere of the state that is going to polls this year. Wearing a hoodie, he has given out a hate-filled statement…

Thousands of activists of the Bhim Army gathered in Saharanpur to demand the release of their chief Chandrashekhar ‘Azad’ from jail. सहारनपुर में भीम आर्मी रैली शुरू हो रही है Posted by ChalChitra Abhiyaan on Samstag, 17. Februar 2018 The demand gathers new urgency in the face of Chandrashekhar’s recent statements to…

The National Museum, Delhi, curated a temporary exhibition titled “Rama-Abhirama: The beauty of Rama in Indian Art and Tradition,” which was opened to the public on 18 December, 2017 in the presence of Professor B B Lal, the eminent archaeologist of Ayodhya fame. Stringing together a diverse range of material objects and art works…

The Indian Railways has removed Malayalam as one of the languages for the recruitment exam for group D posts. Other than Malayalam all the other regional languages are intact. Now, apart from English, Hindi and Urdu, applicants can write the exam in Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi Kannada, Telugu, Tamil, Konkani, Odiya, Assamese and Manipuri. This…

“ To meet Asma Jahangir was to meet women empowerment in real terms. She relentlessly fought for human rights, women rights and for rights of minorities in Pakistan . She began her crusade at the young age of 20 against military rule of Zia Ul Haq which was the darkest period of Pakistani history,”…

Would it be possible to imagine that leader of any organisation openly declaring that her/his people/activists have the ability to prepare an "army" in three days , can be deployed on the front within three days, questions the ability of the security forces for quick operations, and does not face any legal hassles ?…

“There is a real Wonder Woman” is the title of a new painting from Irish artist Jim Fitzpatrick, who is famous for drawing the iconic 1968 poster of Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara, depicting Palestinian imprisoned teen Ahed Tamimi as a superhero. Fitzpatrick said he was amazed by Tamimi’s bravery when he first learned of…

Over 8,000 teachers, students and karmacharis marched through the streets of Delhi demanding that public education be saved. Participating in the Shiksha Bachao Rally today, they marched from Mandi House to MHRD. The Joint Rally of DUTA, DUCKU, DUSU and other students’ organizations was also joined by FEDCUTA and AIFUCTO. Teachers and students of AUD,…

Despite four years of the RSS (via its pocket organisation BJP) rule in India under the leadership of PM Modi, a hardened practitioner of the Hindutva politics, the RSS dream of converting democratic-secular polity of India into Hindu rashtra where Manusmriti would be law of the land seems to have fizzled out. The RSS had declared…

My name is Ka'i Chand The Sar-e Asman. In English, somewhat arbitrarily, I am called The Mirror of Beauty. I am an Urdu novel, a little above 850 pages long. My English avatar is nearly a thousand pages worth of prose of a somewhat quaint register, or registers. I was somewhat horrified when an…

Dear Friends, After accepting the Sahitya Akademi Award I now come to your midst in order to make a symbolic, moral gesture. Let me explain briefly. The book that earned me this award is God's Own Book which is so to speak my extra grief at the present plight of the world and humanity, and…

On Friday (February 2nd), a Supreme Court bench headed by the Chief Justice of India heard a petition for making laws pertaining to rape, sexual harassment, stalking, voyeurism, outraging the modesty etc gender-neutral. The plea filed by a SC lawyer Rishi Malhotra argued that the word “any man” used under these offences in Indian…

Sahitya Akademi Award winner K P Ramanunni donated a part of his prize money to Junaid's family. The Malayalam novelist won the award for his book Daivathinte Pusthakam. Speaking to the Indian Cultural Forum, the writer explains why he chose to donate his prize money to the family of the16-year old teenager who was lynched by Hindu fanatics last year….

In our latest in the #WritersTalkPolitics series, Abubakar Adam Ibrahim talks to Souradeep Roy. The Indian edition of his first novel, Season of Crimson Blossoms, has been brought out by Speaking Tiger Books. In the first part of the interview, Roy and Ibrahim discuss the novel and his literary influences. Ibrahim also explains what he…

Having run out of items for its anti-India menu, OpIndia.com has called the Kerala Literature Festival (KLF) 2018 anti-Indian. The article, which has been posted by a “mlessp” (we’re still googling to find out what that is) names Arundhati Roy, Ashis Nandy, Prakash Raj, Rajdeep Sardesai and Sagarika Ghose in interesting ways. Roy is a…

The National Broadcasting Standards Authority (NBSA) has rejected Zee News revision petition in the Gauhar Raza Mushaira case. Zee News has been asked to display an apology for the obnoxious coverage on the poet scientist. The apology was ordered to be displayed on February 16,.2018 at 9 pm and further, the channel has been asked to deposit…

The death of Asma Jahangir has been received with sorrow, anguish and a great sense of loss by people all over the world, especially in Pakistan and India. She was a woman of rare courage and indomitable commitment to women’s rights and human rights, a commitment that never wavered despite the many attacks that she…

Senior Journalist Urmilesh in conversation with Newsclick talks about the Prime Minister Narendra Modi's conduct on the floor of the Parliament on issues and facts that simply don't suit the stature of a statesman.

Baba Budan Giri is also known as the Babri of the south. This beautiful film explores the story and charts out the struggle of memory against forgetting. As the Babri Masjid issue is being heard by the Supreme Court, CJP looks at other, similar, cynical, politically motivated disputes that put the Ram Janma Bhoomi movement…

Asma Jahangir is no more. Death (cardiac arrest) was sudden, dramatic almost taking away Asma at a time when this region needed her the most. As warmongers dominate and the language of hate between India and Pakistan holds sway, even as civilians and soldiers die by the dozens, Asma’s voice for peace remained firm…

Our Prime Minister stated this in the Parliament on February 7, 2018 while replying to the debate on the motion of thanks to the President’s address: “If the country’s first prime minister was Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel, then this part of my Kashmir would not have been with Pakistan today”( excerpts based on the…

LeftWord Books, recently published John Reed’s “stirring eyewitness account” of the Russian Revolution, Ten Days That Shook the World with an introduction by one of India’s finest journalists and public intellectuals P. Sainath. In Howard Zinn’s words, Reed “made history come alive for the readers of popular magazines and impoverished radical monthlies” through his journalistic…

As Gandhi used to say, although men and women are different, they are equals. One has to be very conscious in approaching and understanding this sensitive and a complex relationality of both the genders. If one were to dismiss the differences between them, there exists a danger of also blinding oneself to the constructed…

Two journalists in the Arab region of Ahwaz in Iran have been summoned to appear in a regime court after they condemned the deteriorating standards of education in the region, which are the worst in the country. The journalists, Naim Hamidi and Sayed Nashan Al-Boshawka, both wrote articles criticising the performance of the education directorate…

Activism in Kashmir has usually seen men at the forefront. Women — who are perhaps the biggest victims of the protracted conflict in the valley — have remained on the sidelines, treated as passive victims and confined to the four walls of their home. In recent years, however, there has been a slow and…

Today marks five years since Afzal Guru was hanged to death, On February 9, 2013, for his role in the 2001 Parliament Terror Attack. His execution was carried out as a top secret government operation, code named Operation Three Star, with news of the execution reaching his family days days later, by post. His remains were buried…

The unexpected demise of V.M. Sathish—a veteran Expat-journalist who spent a quarter century of reporting in the GCC countries—has left a deep vacuum in the domain of ‘human interest’ writings in the world of media. Sathish has a reputed track-record in Expat-journalism. Beginning with the Indian Express Group of newspapers in Mumbai, he held many positions…

So here’s the thing: one government body has censored another government body. On January 29, the Mumbai International Film Festival (MIFF) did not screen In the Shade of Fallen Chinar, a 16 minute documentary on students at the University of Kashmir, directed by Shawn Sebastian and Fazil N.C.. The documentary was not screened despite the…

The third national convention of Dakshinayan Abhiyan, called Samas, took place on 29 and 30 January, 2018. On the opening day, Ganesh Devy, the founder of Dakshinayan Abhiyan, explained the relevance of the chosen name, “[Samas means to] connect units of meaning to produce new meaning; and, since [this] Nagpur convention is [about] bringing…

This essay has been extracted from The Historian and her Craft Collected Essays and Lectures of Romila Thapar recently published by the Oxford University Press and republished here with permission. Image courtesy beaninspirer.com For many decades now it has been maintained that Indian civilization has shown an absence of dissent and protest. This has become so axiomatic…

Malayalam poet Kureeppuzha Sreekumar was attacked by RSS and BJP activists on Monday, 5 january 2018, after a speech that he delivered at the Kairali Library at Kottukkal in Kollam district, Kerala. The Indian Cultural Forum talked to the poet about the incident and about the increasingly number of attacks against writers, artists, and thinkers in the…

The coming weekend in the city will see Studio Khirki host The Irregulars Art Fair, an “anti-art fair” meant for independent artists to exhibit their works. The event, spread over three days — 9th, 10th, and 11th February, 2018 — is curated by Tarini Sethi, founder and curator at TIRAF, and Anant Ahuja, Creative…

Baba Budangiri Mountain has increasingly become a hot bed for the communal politics of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Sangh Parivar in Karnataka. The dispute is over the religious identity of the shrine in Baba Budangiri, a mountain in the Baba Budan Mountain Range in the Western Ghats. Who was Baba Budan?…

The “Neeta” of Meghe Dhaka Tara is no more. Supriya Choudhury, whose talent was sucked into the towering screen presence of her co-star and partner Uttam Kumar, will still remain archived in the history of Bengali cinema by virtue of her sole performance as Neeta in Ritwik Ghatak’s classic film Meghe Dhaka Tara. Choudhury passed away on…

It was an act of violence and terror, albeit of a critically different kind. When 23-year-old Ankit Saxena’s throat was slit after an altercation with the family members of his childhood sweetheart a few days ago, while the usual suspects of the BJP, Manoj Tiwari, and the Bajrang Dal swung into pre-scripted, hate-driven action,…

Whether it be Hadiya, who was more fortunate than poor Ankit who was brutally killed by his girl friends family, the issue is not just about religion but more about the patriarchal and intolerant approach towards the rights of the girl child. Hadiya’s father tried her to lock her up at home, and make…

After the end of Peshwa – Brahmin rule in today’s Western Maharashtra, English rule began and it was through a war in 1818 at a place near Pune – Bhima Koregaon, Peshwa army was defeated by English army unit the Mahar regiment. Thus Peshwa rule was defeated through Mahar Caste (untouchables) regiment by the…

Noted Malayalam poet Kureepuzha Sreekumar was attacked and threatened by a group of RSS activists on Monday late evening in Kollam. So far, six of them have been taken into custody, including a panchayat member of BJP. The RSS activists targeted Sreekumar when he was about to leave the venue of a meeting which…

On 4 February 2018, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, addressed a large gathering during the concluding event of Parivartan Rally, in Bangalore. Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) 90-day long election campaign rally in Karnataka kicked off on 2 November 2017, with party president, Amit Shah, attending the flagging it off. While talking about the developments during…

This is the first part from a a three part discussion on Recasting Women, the landmark anthology of essays co-edited by Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid. In conversation with Pragati Mohapatra, who teaches at Indraprastha College For Women, Sangari reflects on some of the most important ideas Vaid and she introduced to studies on women…

The Indian Cultural Forum is proud to present Anson A Athikalam's film Upavahana, a film on the Rohingya refugees. Director's Note Upavahana, which is Pali for "washing away", is a humble effort at narrating the story of the Rohingya refugees in 12 minutes. This is probably the first documentary fiction movie on the issue. Upavahana…

Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s blockbuster movie Padmavati raised the hackles of the Rajput community across several states, who vandalised the film sets and threatened further violence on the grounds that it distorted the history of Rajput Rani Padmini, and hurt their sentiments. Various persons threatened specific targetted violence like Mahipal Singh Makrana allegedly threatening to cut off…

This is an excerpt from an inteview with Kumkum Sangari, one of the most important feminist scholars of our time. In conversation with Souradeep Roy, she explains that fictional characters too can be manipulated in a way to serve vested interests of a particular social group. Watch this space to see the entire interview. Also…

Suicide by three girl students in the twin states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana in the first week of February has sent shock waves across the country and highlighted a host of simmering problems faced by students. Two doctor aspirants in Andhra Pradesh, Ragari Chandra Nagamani, 18, and Chakali Vijayalakshmi, 18, and a Class…

As part of the Third National Convention of the Dakshinayan Abhiyan, writers, activists, and artists gathered together from across the country, to remember Gauri Lankesh’s fearless journalism, and the life that she lived giving a voice to the voiceless. The event took place in Gandhi’s Sevagram Ashram.

The South Asian activists gathered at Holland Park in Surrey on Sunday evening to remember Gauri Lankesh and Rohith Vemula, the two prominent victims of the right wing extremists. Organized by the Indians Abroad for Pluralist India (IAPI), the rally was held to mark the birth anniversaries of the two individuals who stood up…

The Haryana Police on Saturday arrested three people for allegedly assaulting two Kashmiri students in Mahendergarh town in south Haryana. "Guilty will be punished. The incident began over a minor collision of the motorcycle of the accused. Three people have already been arrested and senior officer (SP) is on the spot," Haryana Chief Minister…

The Union Budget presented by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley received sharp criticism from the National Campaign for Dalit Human Rights (NCDHR) which pointed out that once again, the Budget had failed to live up to the expectations of the marginalised communities of India. In the Union Budget 2017-18, there was a fundamental shift made…

The Kashmir Valley is tense again after three civilians died in army firing in Shopian district on 27 January. This happened three days after an encounter between the army and militants in the same area, which left a civilian and two militants dead. While the Valley has been in mourning for the four young Kashmiri men,…

In a way, middle-aged Afrazul Khan of Maldah’s Syedpur, a migrant laborer from West Bengal was killed by a Hindutva- induced fanatic in Rajasthan on 6 December last year. His family had better luck than his three co-religionists in their early twenties who were battered to death by some Hindu villagers at Chopra, in neighboring…

The prize-winning Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was invited by France’s foreign ministry to appear as guest of honour to the Institut Francais’s cultural event La Nuit des Idées. She was interviewed by the French journalist Caroline Broué. Adichie was asked if there were bookshops in Nigeria. Adichi responded on Facebook to respond to this…

The third national convention of Dakshinayan Abhiyan was recently held in Wardha and Nagpur on 29 and 30 January 2018. The Dakshinayan Abhiyan is a movement launched by Padma Shri Ganesh Devy, a scholar, linguist, and an activist. According to Devy, it is larger than a literary festival; it is also a social movement…

The All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA) expresses its disappointment with the anti-people budget presented today by the Finance Minister Shri Arun Jaitley on behalf of the Modi-led NDA government. Since this is the final full budget of this government before the elections of 2019, it is based on high rhetoric and overestimated projections…

Aniruddhan Vasudevan, who was a recipient of the Sahitya Akademi Prize for Translation 2016, for his translation of Perumal Murugan’s novel, Madhorubhagan, has now written to the Akademi declining the award. Kongu Kalvi Valarchi Arakattalai, the same group that hounded author Perumal Murugan, also filed a petition in the Madras High Court against his…

On the occasion of the 70th anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi's death, his grandson Rajmohan Gandhi, historian and biographer, delivered a speech at Sevagram, Wardha highlighting the crisis that faces secularism in India today. In his speech he spoke of the many ways in which Gandhi and Ambedkar's ideas of India intersected and the urgent need…

A trial court in Gujarat has been hearing the rape case against self-styled religious leader Asaram Bapu. The Court on Monday (29th January) ordered his appearance before them via video conferencing during the next hearing. Additional Sessions Judge Rashida Vora on Monday allowed the application moved by the prosecution to produce Asaram in the court…

On 29 January 2018, Bangalore celebrated Gauri Lankesh's birthday. Her extra ordinary life was remembered by the young leaders including Umar Khalid, Richa Singh, Shehla Rashid, Kanhaiya Kumar and Jignesh Mevani. In their speech, they warned the Sangh Parivar once again that the power of the pen is mightier than their bullets. That if, in life,…

Changes in higher education policies have been materialising silently and consistently missing the headlines. Students have been protesting against these changes for a long time and raising serious questions on fund cuts in research. One such protest was held on January 30, where students from JNU, DU and Jamia held a protest at the UGC against the…

Let us forget all the violence angry members of the Karni Sena and other satellite right wing groups are creating against the release of Padmavat for a minute. Let us forget the lack of authenticity of historical documents, writings and poetry that point out that Padmavati is fiction, or, that, Allauddin Khilji lived between 1296 and…

This essay has been extracted from The Historian and her Craft Collected Essays and Lectures of Romila Thapar recently published by the Oxford University Press and republished here with permission. Image sourced from YouTube Rajan Gurukkal (RG): Let me start with a general feature of your studies, particularly the methodology part, which has inspired me a lot….

In response to a question in the Jammu and Kshmir Legislative Assembly, the government of Jammu and Kashmir stated on 16 January, 2018 that there were 297 reported cases of rape in the year 2017, in contrast to 189 in 2016, as per media reports. These recent figures are alarming, even accounting for…

Here is a ground report from Durgapur and Islampur. In June 2017, three Muslims were killed by a frenetic Hindu mob near the Chopra police station in Durgapur. They killed three Muslim men from Islampur: Mohammed Nasiruddin, Nasirul Haque and Mohammed Samiruddin. Along with Harsh Mander, John Dayal, and others from Karwaan-e-Mohabbat, we met Ashin…

Once again, we are witness to barbaric acts going unnoticed or applied blinkers to by the authorities. I am referring to the stone pelting on a school bus in Haryana. Targeting innocent children is an example of the worst sort of mob violence. It is horrifying to watch the videos of the attack that…

Gauri Lankesh fearlessly spoke truth to power. She stood up against injustice and discrimination. She strived for communal harmony until her dying breath. On the occasion of Gauri Lankesh’s birth anniversary, we are publishing a heart breakingly beautiful tribute by her sister Kavita. She raved, she ranted, Many times she burst out…. Uppercaste…

The first Jan Sahitya Parv (People’s Literature Festival), organised by the Saajha Sanskritik Morcha, a joint cultural forum backed by Communist Party of India Marxist (CPI-M), Communist Party of India Marxist-Leninist (CPI-ML), and various other people’s organisations, took place in Jaipur on 24 and 25 January, 2018. The festival kicked off with a mashaal-juloos,…

On 26 January 2018, India’s 69th Republic Day, Sharad Pawar, president of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), along with senior leaders of the left, led a march against the current Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led regime at the Centre. Opposition party leaders like D Raja (CPI), Sitaram Yechury (CPI-M), Omar Abdullah, leader of opposition in the…

Oprah Winfrey a household name, dubbed as the Queen of All Media, evokes a feeling of strength and compassion. Her speech at the Golden Globes was a powerhouse. If you haven’t already heard it, I think you should. But why I write today isn’t about her, it’s about how celebrities abroad be it actors…

A bench headed by the Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra today dismissed a petition seeking the deletion of some of the scenes of controversial film Padmaavat which was released on January 25 by noting that censor board has already granted certificate and refused to go into the issue again. The petition was filed by Advocate…

In the sustained communal offensive against the secular character of the Indian Constitution, the term "secular" is in serious danger of becoming a casualty. This is largely because the notion of "secularism", itself a modern concept which cannot be delinked from democratic principles and rights of citizenship, has often in this communal ideological onslaught been…

Kavita Lankesh's poem talks about how she finds it difficult to cope with Gauri's death. On the occasion of Gauri Lankesh's birthday we are publishing this touching tribute to the fearless tigress from her loving sister. The last 10 seconds Sometimes I feel You are here… It’s just one of those hectic days…

Ever since Jagadesh Kumar Mamidala was appointed in Jawaharlal Nehru University as the Vice Chancellor, the varsity’s democratic values and academic structures have been under constant attack. The students and teachers of the university accuses Kumar for imposing polices drafted by RSS and BJP to the curb the academic and democratic spaces, and ultimately privatise the university. …

We, retired civil servants belonging to different Services and batches, wish to register our deep concern at the continuing incidents of mindless violence in the country, especially those targeting the minorities, and the lackadaisical response of the law enforcement machinery to these attacks. The killing of Mohammed Afrazul, a migrant worker from West Bengal…

Jan Sahitya Parv was held in Jaipur on 24th and 25th January 2018. The idea behind the event was to celebrate people’s literature and underline the social responsibility of literature. Co-published with Newsclick

Ashin Mohammed says he had a dream. He starts to explain the dream to Harsh Mander and the others from the Karwan-e-Mohabbat team, but is, soon, overwhelmed with tears. They choke his throat before the words can come out. His son, Mohammed Nasiruddin, is one of the three who were killed in a…

This essay has been extracted from The Historian and her Craft Collected Essays and Lectures of Romila Thapar recently published by the Oxford University Press and republished here with permission. Image sourced from YouTube The organization of a historical tradition revolves around two related components—the purpose of action and the agency of action. Both of these…

What is the state of media freedom in India? With constant censorship from both state and non-state actors, as of now it is obvious that journalists in this country are enduring terrible times only to practice the profession. At the same time, with giant corporates and close aids of political leaders owning and controlling…

Sushma Swaraj recently made news when she said that the Government of India was making efforts to accord Hindi the status of an official language in the United Nations. Shashi Tharoor promptly questioned the move, pointing out that Hindi wasn’t the national language of the country, only an official one. As we approach the Republic…

The films directed by Sergei Eisenstein during the 1920s marked a new paradigm in the world of cinema. A pioneer in the practice of montage, he was among the early major theorists of cinema. Born on 22 January 1898, Eisenstein left behind a rich legacy that is complex and in many ways, immeasurable. The…

Assertion of caste, regional, ethnic, religious and national identities are characteristic of new democracies, as groups previously lacking consciousness wake up to their identity and seek a place in the sun. The opening up of the power structure by the establishment of democratic institutions and the institution of elections helps mobilise there entities which…

After a very long time the three premier Indian science academies, Indian Academy of Science (IASc), Indian National Science Academy (INSA) and the National Academy of Sciences, India (NASI), have issued a joint statement; it is a response to the Minister of State for Human Resource Development, Satyapal Singh’s outright denial of Darwin’s theory of evolution…

Satyapal Singh, Minister of State for Human Resource Development, issued a statement claiming evolution never happened since no one saw an ape converting into a human. Such statements by our highest ranking ministers show the lack of rationality in BJP’s core ideologies. What can be the future of India’s science and technological development when our…

A procession of Dalits was attacked by a group of upper caste men in Bhima-Koregaon, Maharashtra. In UP’s Muzaffarnagar, a Dalit was beaten and forced to chant "Jai Sri Ram". On any given day, a few news anchors reveal a new geographical setting, where a Dalit has been subjected to violence, threat or abuse. Many…

In a talk organised by the Mumbai Collective, eminent scholar Raosaheb Kasbe talks about the alarming instances of vigilantism, and the rise in violence and lynchings in the name of religion, that have increased over the past three years. He also talks about the unscientific notions, like the study of ancient vedas, that are being propagated…

Image courtesy Peoples Film Collective Facebook page Kasturi Basu, one of the organisers of the 5th Kolkata People’s Film Festival, waits outside the entrance to Jogesh Mime Academy auditorium with a donation box as the crowd from the last session comes out. She says, “Please donate for the People’s Film Festival; we run on your…

In the coming week, Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu will tour different cities of India along with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. This visit comes at the beginning of a year that sees Israel globally ever more isolated and ever more aggressively advancing its ethnic cleansing and annexation of Palestinian land. To invite the leader…

In the Pul Pehlad mohalla (settlement) of Lal Kuan in outer Delhi, everybody knows "the boy with the pushcart" or the "chilli-potato boy". He is the youngest pushcart vendor in the area. I spot him running through a narrow lane in the slum settlement, bordered with open sewers, to the empty space where he parks his handcart. He…

Raja Shehadeh, a Palestinian author and lawyer in a discussion with Prabir Purkayastha says that the expanding Israeli annexation of Jerusalem and the recent US decision to move embassy to the city has now totally killed the Oslo agreement.

Penny Johnson, co-author of Seeking Palestine: New Palestinian Writing on Exile and Home, talks about the book, the ideal of memory, nostalgia, and Palestine as an international struggle. Listen to the whole conversation here: Co-published with Newsclick

In this part of our interview with Meena Menon, author of Reporting Pakistan, we discuss reporting Pakistan in the Indian Media. She says, "Our perceptions about Pakistan are coloured according to stereotypes" Listen to the whole conversation here: Part III Also watch: Meena Menon: “Is saying yes to the ruling government nationalism?” (Part I) Meena Menon: “Put…

“So, you want to know how it started? The band began with Khalid and me — we went to kindergarten together,” said Mir Kashif Iqbal, the lead guitarist of the band Parvaaz. He was tired (they had just landed in Delhi and reached the hotel), and, from his voice, it was clear to us that…

“And when religious instruction comes with a proxy, term “culture” resistance should be registered strongly”: Rohith Vemula Two years after Rohith Vemula’s death, his memory lives within us in the form of songs, poetry, verse, and resistance. The systematic and the institutional murder of Vemula not only unearthed the reality in university spaces but…

Five years ago, when I heard of the Bhima-Koregaon celebrations for the first time, I did not feel any personal connection with its history. Gradually, as my understanding of the Ambedkarite movement developed, I realised the importance of this battle for people for my caste location, i.e., a Mali Shudra. The Battle is primarily…

Since the right wing government came to power, minorities in our country have been living in fear. Women are being harassed in public; people are lynched in the name of religion, caste; ruthless policies are being imposed upon the citizens. The BJP government has turned a blind eye to all these issues in their quest to make India a "Hindi-Hindu-Hindustani"…

The Supreme Court on Thursday paved the way for an all-India release for Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Padmaavat on January 25 by staying the orders banning the release of the film by the Gujarat, Rajasthan and Haryana governments. The film industry hailed the decision. Staying the "notifications and orders" banning the release of the controversial film…

On 17 January 2016, University of Hyderabad mourned over the death of their young research scholar Rohith Vemula. The 27 year old ended his life after facing continuous harassment from the university's administration. Rohith's institutional murder reignited a debate in the country that has long lain dormant: Was Rohith targeted because of his caste?…

The manner in which several Indian states are banning the release of Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Padmavat even after the Central Board of Film Certification has passed it following the slight change in its title, it would appear that these states have themselves decided to become state censor boards unto themselves, rendering the decision of the CBFC…

Urging the government to enact the "Rohith Act" and ensure scholarship for all students from marginalized sections, academic fraternity and social activists across the country stood together in memory of Rohith Vemula. The existing system which is based on caste-based structural inequality had pushed Rohith, a Dalit research scholar at the University of Hyderabad, to…

Two years back on this day, January 17, Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula committed suicide in NRS hostel in University of Hyderabad. After protesting for two weeks against his suspension along with four other Dalit students, losing hope, Vemula took the extreme step. Outraged over his demise, students of the University led a collective…

This essay has been extracted from The Historian and her Craft Collected Essays and Lectures of Romila Thapar recently published by the Oxford University Press and republished here with permission. Image courtesy Governance Now The historian’s interest in epic literature arises from the argument that epic literature generally documents a period which is prior to that of…

Let me cut short all detours and answer your burning question: no, calling Bollywood to not shoot their films in Israel is not an attack on freedom of speech and expression. I understand this sounds confusing, but what is at stake here? Calling for a boycott of Israeli institutions (and there’s a reason I’ve highlighted…

The informal workers narratives, hosted by Working Peoples' charter and WIEGO, brings together a panel of workers from different trades, including domestic workers, e-rickshaw drivers, waste-pickers, street vendors, home-based workers, Hamal and other workers, showcasing their life, their work, and their challenges. The conversation throws light on the role played by informal workers in making…

The Judiciary in India is undoubtedly the most respected organ of Government in India. The soul and heart of this respect comes from the integrity of the Courts and their relative independence from the executive and the legislature. There are few defining moments in the history of the judiciary when judges have put their…

Yesterday noon, the usual perturbing quietness of central Delhi was broken by activists gathered together to protest the diplomatic visit of Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, to India. Netanyahu’s visit is being portrayed, all across the mainstream media, as an “accomplishment” of the Modi regime. Netanyahu’s personal camaraderie with Modi, the elusive “agreements”…

September 28, 2017: Santoshi Kumar, 11, Simdega district died of hunger. Her mother Koyli Devi said that the family was not receiving rations under the Public Distribution scheme for the past several months as their ration cards were not linked to Aadhar. October 21,2017: Baidyanath Das died at Jharia, Dhanbad district. His family said…

A study to understand social prejudices against women and Dalits in India was published recently in the Economic and Political Weekly (EPW). This study was exploring explicit prejudice – "beliefs and behaviours to which people openly and readily admit that reinforce the lower social status of people in oppressed groups.". This study was conducted by…

Comrade Govind Pansare was shot on 16th February 2015. Sadly, he succumbed to his injuries and passed away on 20th February 2015. His death led to an obvious and clear vacuum in the social, political, and cultural sphere. Everyone remembers him in his various roles as a bold Marxist, a communist party leader, a supporter of…

Indira Jaising at the All India People's Forum Press Meet, talked about the urgency of the probe on Justice Loya's death. Judge Loya was hearing the politically sensitive Sohrabuddin Sheikh police encounter case in which BJP President Amit Shah was one of the accused.

Wajib, by Annemarie Jacir, won the Golden Crow Pheasant Award for the best International film at the 22nd International Film Festival of Kerala. Jacir, a female Palestinian director, was present at the festival venue; she sat face to face with this film scholar, speaking about her film and the political milieu of present-day Palestine. The…

Although India consistently supported the Palestinian struggle to reclaim their lost lands and for forming their own country free from Israel, in recent years India has shown a distinct shift towards greater friendship with Israel. This trend has received a boost with the RSS backed BJP govt. coming to power in India in 2014….

A protest march against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s India visit was organised in Delhi by the Left parties, the All India Peace and Solidarity Organization, and the Palestine Solidarity Committee, India. The march took place in the larger context of atrocities committed by Israeli government in Palestine and illegal occupation.

The Lingayat community in Karnataka has been struggling for about 40 years to get state recognition as separate from the Hindus. The movement is fast gaining momentum now. M M Kalburgi, who worked extensively on Vachana Sahitya, and Gauri Lankesh, who was a popular supporter of the movement, were both assassinated. Against this backdrop,…

Brisk winds lashed our faces as we descended from the sherut which brought us from Tel Aviv to Damascus Gate in Jerusalem, during April 2016. Starving from the two long hour journey, my partner and I were immediately drawn to the shops of roasting meat and sweets which lined the pavements, but which were oddly deserted….

That all is not right at home was made resoundingly clear as Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu boarded the flight for India with reporters asking why he was not taking his son Yair with him. All of course knew the reason for the question, as thousands took to the streets in Tel Aviv against Netanyahu…

Teesta Setalvad in the interview with the grandson of BR Ambedkar, Prakash Ambedkar explains about the violence happened at Bhima Koregaon and the incidents followed after the pre-planned attack by the right wing forces.

Israel has done a masterpiece of political plays enacting the long planned visit by Narendra Modi. It was the first one of an Indian prime minister and it was to show to its own population and to the entire world that repeated warnings about Israel’s growing international isolation are untrue. Modi has been…

Four of the five senior most judges of the Supreme Court – Justices J Chelameswar, Ranjan Gogoi, Madan Lokur and Kurian Joseph – in a letter to Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra expressed concern on certain judicial orders passed by the top court which has “adversely affected the overall functioning of the justice…

On March 30, 1976, Palestinians protested against Israel's plans to occupy thousands of acres of Palestinian land in Galilee. Six Palestinians were gunned down by the Israeli army and police, and hundreds wounded in the confrontation. Since 1976, every year, Palestinians around the world commemorate March 30th as "Land Day" – a day to announce…

Home. The word is used so casually by most of us. What the word stands for is also easy enough to identify. A house or a room; a village or a city or a country; a couple of people or more; a language or two; food, maybe some landscapes, myths and tales. In other words,…

This is our ninth story for our #OctoberRevolutionSeries, a series we began in October 2017 to remember the centenary of the Russia Revolution. The first is an excerpt from Cecilia Bobrovskaya's memoirs; the second is from an essay by Prabir Purkayastha; the third is our inaugral bookend by Githa Hariharan on Sevtlana Alexievich's novel Second Hand Time; and the fourth is a conversation with…

Dear Chief Justice, It is with great anguish and concern that we have thought it proper to address this letter to you so as to highlight certain judicial orders passed by this Court which has adversely affected the overall functioning of the justice delivery system and the independence of the High Courts besides impacting the…

Benjamin Netanyahu is set to visit India next week. India and Israel are closer than ever before. In light of the Donald Trump's announcement that the United States of America (USA) will officially view Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, Netanyahu’s visit becomes an even more open endorsement of Israel’s crimes against Palestine. This comes…

An incident that took place twenty 25 ago has the capacity to question many of our notions about land, language, and their enemy. I was invited to a town, known as the “rice bowl,” near Raichur to deliver a talk on the Rajyothsava Day celebration. A little before my speech, one of the conveners of…

Four Judges of the Supreme Court of India held a press meet on 12 January to criticise the way the apex court is functioning. This was an unprecedented move, never before seen in India or elsewhere in the world. The four judges – seniormost after the chief justice – released a letter submitted to…

The Dalits are angry again. Another incident of caste violence and atrocity was registered in Maharashtra. This time Dalits were protesting against the planned attack by the Hindutvadi rightwing groups on an event, organized to commemorate the "victory of Mahar’s" over the mighty Peshwas at the battle of Bhima-Koregaon in 1818. Further, the protest was not restricted…

As the international consensus on holding Israel accountable for its regime of apartheid, occupation and settler-colonialism against Palestine grows, Modi government is welcoming Netanyahu to India. This growing alliance not only subverts India's commitment of solidarity to Palestine, it also endangers the freedom and welfare of Indians.

In the wake of the recent attack on peaceful Ambedkarites, celebrating the Bhima Koregaon battle, by right-wing groups—and the ensuing violence that brought Maharashtra to a standstill—we decided to catch up with the filmmaker of Battle of Bhima Koregaon: An Unending Journey, Somnath Waghmare. Completed in April 2016, according to him, "This is the only…

In our latest interview for the series Writers Talk Politics, Souradeep Roy talks to Easterine Kire, a novelist, poet, translator from Nagaland. They discuss her novel, Son of the Thundercloud which has won the Best Book (Fiction) award at the 2017 Tata Literature Live festival. Her latest novel is Don't Run, My Love, brought out…

RTI activist and peasant leader Akhil Gogoi talks to Newsclick about NSA charges against him, the state of North East politics and the way forward for India in light of recent crackdown by the RSS and BJP.

Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “the ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.” On the 14th of January 2018 a person who is the Prime Minister of Israel is actually not visiting India, rather a salesman is coming to sell…

In the Hadiya case: A group of young lawyers from Lawyers Collective, who were present in the Supreme Court during the last hearing where Hadiya was summoned to be heard before the bench, discuss the unusual events that played out in the courtroom, decisional autonomy, and why this is a highly gendered issue.

Gobble D. Gook has been following the shifts in position on the National Anthem case with great interest. Now, the Supreme Court has modified it's earlier order dated 30th November, 2016 making playing of the National Anthem prior to the screening of feature films in cinema halls mandatory. The learned AG made a refreshingly…

Jawaharlal Nehru University Vice Chancellor M.Jagadesh Kumar has come out with yet another decision to whittle down the standards of excellence that the university had achieved over decades. He has now cancelled all mandatory public viva voce for research and directed the faculty to conduct this only on Skype. JNU Teachers Association has “rejected”…

Professor GN Saibaba, who was given a life imprisonment for alleged ties to Maoists, continues to suffer in solitary confinement in prison despite absence of any credible evidence against him. Saibaba’s wife, Vasantha Kumari, addressed a press conference on Wednesday, held by the Delhi Chapter of Bastar Solidarity Network. She spoke about her recent…

This essay has been extracted from The Historian and her Craft Collected Essays and Lectures of Romila Thapar recently published by the Oxford University Press and republished here with permission. Image courtesy DNA India Given the absence of an acceptable decipherment of the Indus script, the inscriptions of the Mauryan ruler Aśoka are the earliest documentation…

Kanhaiya Kumar, former JNUSU President addressed a gathering today during the Yuva Hunkar Rally in Delhi. Youth leaders from different parts of the country had gathered in defence of the democracy and constitution.

Yuva Hunkar Rally on January 9th 2018 brought together youth leaders like Jignesh Mevani, Kanhaiya Kumar, Umar Khalid and Akhil Gogoi among others who raised their voice against the injustice being faced by Dalits, Muslims and other marginalized youth across India.

The fortunes of India irrevocably changed on May 29, 1658 when two Indian armies clashed on the dusty fields of Samugarh near Agra. India’s history changed forever. Aurangzeb’s victory over his brother Dara Shikoh marked the beginning of Islamic bigotry in India that not only alienated Hindus but also the much more moderate Sufis…

The significance of the Supreme Court order referring the constitutionality of Section 377 to a larger bench goes beyond LGBT rights. Current debates have focused on the decriminalisation of several laws and the legitimate role of criminal law in our legal system in matters of sexuality. Also central to the outcome is the role…

Today marks the 110th birth anniversary of Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986), the acclaimed French feminist theorist, who was born this day on January 9th. She is most known for her groundbreaking work, The Second Sex (1949) along with her book, Mandarins, which received France’s highest literary award in 1954. Her phenomenal work on gender and her…

Dalits started to appear as significant players in the colonial public sphere after 1900, and Kusuma Dharmanna stands out as one of the first to challenge the brand of nationalism advocated by caste Hindus. In rejoinder to a popular Brahman nationalist Garimella Satyanarayana, who preached swarajya (independence) and wrote songs rejecting British rule such as…

Section 377 of Indian Penal Code is a draconian law that criminalises any form of sexuality that is not procreative. In an infamous judgement, the Supreme Court of India upheld the law as constitutional, on 11 December 2013. A report in The Indian Express says, “A three-judge bench headed by CJI Dipak Misra on…

Make no mistake: the next big sci fi book coming out from India will come from members of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). This statement, of course, will not bode well with the emerging market for new speculative fiction writers from India, but what can our lovely writers do when they are faced with such…

The Karnataka State Assembly elections are fast approaching. These elections in the Congress-led state are going to be crucial for every contesting political party. The BJP kicked off its Karnataka campaign with another one of their infamous ratha yatras. For the most of the Parivarthana Yatra, which is about to come to an end,…

On November 8, 2017, a year after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s historic address in which he declared 500 and 1000-rupee notes as illegal, the Opposition was planning to observe it as a “black day”. The BJP, on the other hand, went into a celebratory mode, claiming they had won the fight against the black…

The number of people being targeted for raising their voice against oppression and injustice is on the rise. In light of the increasing number of such cases, Jignesh Mevani along with other leaders will be leading the Yuva Hunkaar Rally for social justice in Delhi on January 9, 12 pm onwards at Parliament Street. …

Facing flak for allowing the prime accused of the Bhima-Koregaon clashes, Manohar Bhide to address a rally in Mumbai, the police have finally cancelled right-wing leader Bhide’s public speech, scheduled to take place in Parel this Sunday. This comes days after the police refused permission to an event organised by student outfit Chhatra Bharati,…

In recent days, incidents of communal violence in Dakshina Kannada district are resulting in the tensed atmosphere across Karnataka. With assembly elections due in coming May, the ruling Congress leaders are arguing that the main opposition BJP party as resorting to religious polarisation tactics to garner the support of Hindu voters. On January 3,…

The journalist fraternity has come out in support of The Tribune and its reporter Rachna Khaira after UIDAI’s FIR against them for publishing a report on Aadhar Data Breach. The report said that a service was being offered by anonymous sellers over WhatsApp which provided unrestricted access to details for any of the more…

Mahtama Gandhi: “Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs. Surely it would be a crime against humanity to reduce the proud Arabs so that Palestine can be restored to the…

Citizenship is conferred by the Constitution and it is the nexus between the individual and the State, defining civil and political rights and liabilities of individuals, the most important of which are the Fundamental rights and the right to vote and participate in all democratic process. Most importantly, it gives unrestricted rights of residence…

The violence at Bhima-Koregaon has proved instrumental in bringing forth the gruesome face of Maharashtra yet again. Bhima-Koregaon has pointed out the extent to which the poison of casteism has spread in this state that chants the names of Phule-Shahu-Ambedkar. In this state of Babasaheb Ambedkar’s, the Ambedkarite public is still treated like second-class…

I went to Maharashtra as I along with other activists and intellectuals were invited to come there. I along with others was a guest there. And I would remember fondly the love and support that I received in Pune and Mumbai. The resilience and enthusiasm of the people I met and their resoluteness to fight…

Newspapers have reported that the Aam Admi Government has reportedly told its legal team to file a criminal case against three channels for airing doctored videos where the words, “Bandook”, “Sher ke bacche”, and “Hurriyat ke jawaan” were inserted (extraneously) into the videos to mislead the public. Even “Pakistan Zindabad” were telecast although they…

I found Allen Perris in his tiny flat with a bandana around his head and a loose fi tting T-shirt. He was soft spoken, modest, and accessible. He was excited about his future as a choreographer of reality shows. Currently working for Zee TV, he was looking forward to work with Star TV and other…

The incidences of Bhima Koregoan have come up as yet another battleground of Dalits’ liberation movement against a Hindutva fascist state run by caste system. The incidences and the videos have been rolling around is just shocking. The symbol of yester-century’s valiant and brave battle and victory over the atrocious ruling Peshwas by a…

Freedom of opinion also means we are all entitled to opinions and that we don’t necessarily have to share the same opinion about anything. The difference in opinion paves way for a debate which may or may not settle the root cause, this type of aggression and war of words are nothing unfamiliar but…

1. From Being Banned to Not Being Banned: Hansda Swovendra Sekhar’s The Adivasi Will Not Dance Hansda Sowvendra Sekhar, an author of two books, came under fire after some groups claimed that his second book, The Adivasi Will Not Dance, a collection of short stories, was pronographic. Shekhar, who worked as a doctor in Pakur…

In the light of recent US decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, there are resounding protests across the world. India, however, has been relatively silent. Lest we forget what Palestine means to us, here is an extract from Githa Hariharan’s edited volume From India to Palestine (2014, Leftword). Alexander recounts here friendships, losses, resilience…

Over four and half years after Muzaffarnagar witnessed one of the most horrific bouts of communal violence in India, senior leaders from Jat and Muslim communities in the area are trying to get the two communities to strike a peace deal. A committee of twenty prominent, reputed and socially respectable members from Jat and Muslim…

Musaab Firas Tamimi, 17, was shot and killed Wednesday by Israeli occupation forces near Ramallah in the West Bank, making him Israel’s first victim in the year 2018 amid major clashes between Palestinians and Israeli soldiers in the West Bank and Gaza. Tamimi was shot by an Israeli soldier, reportedly at a close range,…

Savitribai Phule was a leading social reformer, and first known woman teacher in India. With the RSS and BJP making concerted efforts to distort history, remembering, reading, and talking about figures like Savitribai becomes extremely important now more than ever.

While fake news has understandably dominated the digital noise all of 2017, how do we deal about the malaise of lies and alternative facts that advocate blatant bias? All of yesterday, Times Now and Republic TV channels worked themselves into a frenzy to pinpoint the blame for the violence that broke out in parts…

Ambrose pinto’s death after struggling with treacherous cancer for about six months on 3 January of 2018 made me feel that this year would be bad for Dalits. His smiling face, hopeful of change, keeps flashing through my mind. I last met him when I gave a special lecture at Indian Social Institute Benuluru…

Global Warming and climate change are true. But, along with water bodies, it seems like people’s conscience is also drying up. It is not only the rivers that are polluted with poisonous wastes disposed by the industries, even people’s mind seems to have been contaminated with poisonous thoughts. Controlling children, women, and disabled has become…

This is an excerpt from The Historian and her Craft: Collected Essays and Lectures of Romila Thapar, recently published by the Oxford University Press and republished here with the author's permission. It is the third among our series focusing on Romila Thapar's collected works; read the first here, and the second here. Aryan domination, irrespective of form or agency,…

Building Alternatives: The Story of India's Oldest Construction Workers' Union, by T M Thomas Isaac and Michelle Williams, was published by LeftWord Books in 2017 Misery greets the planet. Social inequality has reached unbelievable levels – where five individuals hold as much wealth as the bottom half of society. Climate change – driven by capitalist expansionism…

Since 1989, on every 1st of January, Jan Natya Manch (Janam) and CITU mark the attack on a group of street theatre activists, which eventually claimed the life of Safdar Hashmi, actor and founder, Janam and Ram Bahadur, an innocent industrial worker.

When the youth of a country is in a sea of joblessness, how can a country and its economy prosper? How can it be easier to talk about Mandir and Masjid when there are no avenues within the economy to absorb graduates fresh out of college? How can any government even think to turn a…

Ambedkarites are agitated all over the country as the despicable attempts of the Hindutva affiliated organisations in Pune attacked the massive assembly of people who had come to pay their respect to 800 brave Mahar soldiers who with the help of British had defeated the then powerful army of the Peshwas which numbered around…

Tension has gripped Maharashtra a day after a person was killed, 25 vehicles were torched and more than 100 vehicles were damaged in stone pelting after individuals allegedly with saffron flags attacked dalits and their vehicles in Pune district. Lakhs of people gather on January 1 in Bhima Koregaon village every year to mark…

3 January is the birth anniversary of Savitribai Phule. Savitribai, a social reformer, is especially remembered for giving access to education to those who were prohibited by the Varna Ashram to learn. Along with her partner, Jyothirao Phule, she opened India’s first girls’ school in Pune at Bhide Wada. With the increase in the attacks…

This year marks the two-hundredth anniversary of the battle of Bhima Koregaon that was instrumental in bringing down the Peshwa rule in Pune. Thousands of followers of Dr B.R. Ambedkar and his philosophy congregate each year on January 1 and pay their tributes to the soldiers who laid down their lives in the battle….

Tamil superstar Rajinikanth, who announced his entry into Tamil Nadu politics last Sunday, is in place to try and pave the way for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Tamil Nadu. He could be the mascot of a new movement and political outfit directed by the BJP leaders in Delhi. It is, therefore, not…

Jewish identity politics complicate the Palestinian response to the existence of Israel as a Jewish state. Sometimes it seems impossible to address the crux of the matter, the Jewish state Nakba in Palestine, without being subjected to attacks one way or another. On the last day of 2017, I posted a meme on my Facebook wall that provoked a…

Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness. – Samuel Beckett. It was probably last few years of the twentieth century. Lankesh introduced Gaurito B.V. Karant, who was visiting their house, saying, “This is my daughter Gauri”. When Lankesh wrote about it, that name had triggered surprise and curiosity in all of…

As the years pass under the current regime, life for Dalits gets more difficult. The biggest setback this year for Dalits and Adivasis was the scrapping of the Scheduled Castes Sub Plan (SCSP) and Tribal Sub Plan (TSP) in the Union Budget 2017. These Special Component Plans, introduced in the 1970s, was to…

As another year is coming to an end, we witnessed huge turmoil everywhere. The intimidation to dissenters continued while political opponents were targeted as usual by the Hindutva groups. Mob lynching and cow terrorism aggravated all over the country and as the state remained subdued and muted, the goons with political patronage had a…

As a new year begins, it becomes necessary to review the legal pronouncements of the past year. 2017 has been replete with many significant judgments by the Supreme Court for India’s jurisprudence. While there are some judgments worthy of mention for the controversial nature and media reportage associated to it, such as that of…

His humour is sunshine warm. His views on love and life are often waterfall fierce, but sometimes feel like molten honey. His politics is to call a spade a spade while his poetry remains achingly romantic. Whether it is about politics or poetry, he has been weaving magic with words for nearly half a…

Film-making is challenge in a multi-religious, multi-ethnic democracy. Particularly if offence-takers are indulged. But each year the propensity to take offence, or to pander to offence-taking, seems to scale new heights. In 2017 the travails of film makers made news throughout the year. The impetus for film censorship ranged from preserving social mores to…

In a deeply affecting account titled Hashimpura 22 May (Penguin 2016) of the slaughter by armed policemen in 1987 of 42 young civilian Muslim men, police officer and novelist Vibhuti Narain Rai says, ‘Imagine such a close encounter with death that when you open your eyes to bodies – dead and half dead – you may…

This year witnessed another string of movies getting into trouble, for reasons that seem absurd at first, but a closer inspection reveals the underlying misogyny that seems to be becoming increasingly more acceptable. For instance, when the Malayam actress, Parvathy, spoke up against the rampant misogyny in the Malayam film industry, she was trolled by…

Union Minister, Mr. Anant Kumar Hegde ji, it is frightening to have to listen to the words you have spoken at Kuknoor in Yelburga Taluk. “Those who are unaware of their parentage are the ones who call themselves secularists,” you say deridingly. Now we have to make you aware of your own parentage. It is…

In this part of our interview with Meena Menon, author of Riots and After in Mumbai, we discuss the difference between news, and rumour/ fake news. She says, "Put the internet to better use and do not spread hatred." Listen to the whole conversation here: Part II

The Muslim community is voicing opposition to the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Bill 2017, which has the provision of three year jail term to husbands who divorce their wives with the now illegal practice of instant triple talaq or Talaq-e-Biddat (uttering the word talaq thrice in one sitting). The controversial bill…

India is worried. But of course,silently lest a whiff of the serious corruption charges threatening to dislodge Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu find their way into the Indian media and Parliament on the eve of his much touted visit to India. And queer the pitch that the Ministry of External Affairs has been carefully preparing…

It wasn’t a surprise to see history lovers in Calcutta queue up on a Sunday morning to engage in a closed door rendezvous with Professor Romila Thapar. Professor Thapar, after years of inimitable research and fearless writing, needs no introduction. She certainly is a festering (and pestering!) eyesore of the Hindu Right, the fascist dispensation…

Why do mainstream and off-mainstream filmmakers have this tendency to use big metros as the settings of their films? We don’t have to seek far for the reasons. One, it is easier to shoot the film in Mumbai specially because the industry itself is centered around this city; two, all big metros fit neatly into…

At a recent talk show by an international television channel, the former spokesperson of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and present general secretary of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Ram Madhav, firmly asserted that the ideology of the RSS was neither supremacist, nor dominant or aggressive. Leave alone fascist.[1] Quoted on the…

I wanted to un-see the image, and yet its grotesqueness stuck with me. The image of a murder as it unravelled before my eyes, on my Facebook screen, from the comfort of my home. The image of a man consumed with hate, making repeated assaults from behind with his axe on a powerless body…

Pablo César is an eminent director from Argentina. His new film, Thinking of Him, was screened at the recently concluded International Film Festival of India, Goa. It is based on the relationship between Rabindranath Tagore and Victoria Ocampo, an Argentinian writer and intellectual. However, Pablo César is yet to reach the stature of Fernando Solanas, the…

Meet filmmaker Ranjan Ghosh who trained at Subhah Ghai’s Whistling Woods and arrived in Kolkata to assist Aparna Sen for her film Iti Mrinalni, stepped into independent direction with his maiden film Hrid Majharey. His second film Rongberonger Korhi (Colour of Money) is now facing the wrath of a Hindu Right Wing organization Hindu Jagran Manch for using the names…

For the past week, followers of Malayalam actor Mammootty have been busy pouring lewd and violent comments against the award-winning artist Parvathy TK, who pointed out the misogynistic trends in Malayalam mainstream movies. While talking in open forum at the recently concluded International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK), Parvathy expressed her disappointment over derogatory…

The Rajasthan government has been in the news for all the wrong reasons this year, especially for its inability to stop lynchings in the name of cow protection. The latest was the brutal murder of a Muslim migrant labourer in Rajsamand. What followed was equally disturbing, when a mob of Hindutva extremists went on a…

The Lok Sabha has passed the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Bill, 2016 (the Bill) which is now to be tabled before the Rajya Sabha. Sadly, this Bill “to provide for protection of rights of transgender persons and their welfare” in fact defeats their rights. It is well settled that the determination of gender…

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in Uttar Pradesh led by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has ordered the withdrawal of a case related to defying prohibitory orders against holding a meeting. This order was registered in 1995 against him and 14 others including a Union Minister and saffron party legislator from Sahajanwa in Gorakhpur. The…

The RSS remains unhappy that Manu Smriti gave way to ‘Ambedkar Smriti’ — which is how Anantkumar Hegde, a central minister in the Modi government, described the Constitution of India at a public function in poll bound Karnataka. Hegde was only being forthright when he told a Brahman Yuva Parishad gathering in Karnataka that…

Parliament was repeatedly adjourned, as the Opposition in both Houses demanded the sacking of Union Minister of State for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship Anantkumar Hegde who had claimed that the BJP would “soon change the Constitution.” Minister Vijay Goel stood up in the Rajya Sabha to state that the government disassociated itself from Hegde’s…

In a video released on December 23, journalist and documentary film maker, Linga Kodopi has alleged that contrary to what was claimed by the security forces, the recent encounter of one Kosi Sori appears like a case of fake encounter. Linga says, “This is just one such in a series of many fake encounters namely…

Anant Kumar Hegde addressed the gathering in an event organised by the Brahmana Yuva Parishad in Koppala district on 25 December 2017. In his speech, the Member of Parliament urged the gathering to identify themselves proudly with their caste, which, according to him, is the identification of one’s blood. He said this while explaining the…

Megha Pansare writes about Bhopal Jan Utsav in Sadhana, a Marathi weekly, of which Narendra Dhabolkar was the editor. In this detailed report on the three days long festival of diversity and resistence in Bhopal, Megha Pansare recollects her experience of participating in the festival. Read the original piece in Marathi by Megha Pansare here:

On the occasion of Ghalib's 220th birth anniversary, Indian Cultural Forum brings to you an extract from the chapter, "Buddhist Thought and Shunyata", from the book Ghalib: Innovative Meanings and the Ingenious Mind, by Gopi Chand Narang, translated into English by Surinder Deol, and published by Oxford University Press. Sufi saints, bhaktas, and aulias have been using…

2017 was the year of increasingly diverse, yet more united struggles by working people of all sorts in India. In dozens of public sector units—ports, steel plants, coal mines, ordnance factories, banks, insurance companies, etc—workers went on strikes or protested against relentless govt. pressure to privatise national assets by handing them over to private industrialists….

The following is an excerpt from the chapter 'राष्ट्रवाद व सांस्कृतिक स्वातंत्र्य', by Makarand Sathe, from the book बदलता भारत अणि जनतेचा राष्ट्रवाद, edited by Dr Megha Pansare. The original, in Marathi, will be available soon on ICF. What is culture? Defining culture is almost impossible. Many people say that we can explain it, talk about it,…

Education is considered a tool to inculcate independent thinking in students. The basis of education is conveying real facts and established principles to the students through their curriculum, equipping them to analyse these facts and evolve their independent thinking. This will lead to a rational society, but education is used as a means for ideological indoctrination…

I look then at the silly walls Through dark eyes in a dark face— And this is what I know: That all these walls oppression builds Will have to go! Langston Hughes, “I look at the world” The American poet, Langston Hughes’ lines were written for a very different purpose and against a very different…

The assembly election in Karnataka is around the corner. Amit Shah, the president of BJP, inaugurated Parivathana (“transformation”) rally, a campaign for the upcoming election in 2018, in Bengaluru on 3 November. Shah, while addressing the gathering, said, “This parivarthana (transformation) rally is not to change the CM [Chief Minister], not to change the government,…

All hell was let loose on 17th November 2017 evening when the Chairman of Dyal Singh College, on Lodhi Road, New Delhi, made an announcement after an unusual—rather, illegal—governing body meeting that the name of Dyal Singh College (Evening Classes), from now onwards, will be Vande Matram College! Prior to this meeting, and following the announcement,…

The BJP government, riding piggyback on the Muslim women’s movement for the abolition of triple talaq, has sought to go a step further with the Bill just tabled in Lok Sabha wherein it has proposed the criminalisation of instant triple talaq. And included a proviso where a man found guilty of the same be sent…

Ninety years ago, on December 25, 1927, huge strides were made in the movement for self-dignity of Dalits. Under the leadership of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar, a small town/village, Mahad in Konkan, the coastal region of Maharashtra, made history. Manusmurti Dahan Din. The day that the text of caste Hindus epitomizing hegemony, indignity and cruelty…

Image courtesy The Tribune India Throughout the West, in both the Americas, Europe and Australia and in parts in other countries in Asia and Africa, there is no festival to beat Christmas; the shopping, the sales, the gifts exchanged, the family dinner with the father or grandfather carving the turkey (apologies to vegetarians), Santa…

Anti-corruption activist of Assam, Akhil Gogoi was re-arrested on Saturday even after the Gauhati High court had quashed the National Security Act (NSA) detention order against him two days before. Gogoi who has been vocal against the current BJP-led government was re-arrested by a team of Goalpara police on the basis of an FIR lodged…

This is an excerpt from The Historian and her Craft Collected Essays and Lectures of Romila Thapar recently published by the Oxford University Press and republished here with permission. Read the first part of our continued focus on Romila Thapar's collected works here. ‘Communal’, as many in this audience are aware, in the Indian context has…

In the latest edition to our series on independent media, we speak to Sevanti Ninan, editor of The Hoot. Souradeep Roy of the Indian Cultural Forum speaks to Ninan on the state of media today, and the pervasive attacks on journalists who work in non-English media establishments.

Andhra Pradesh Municipal workers called off their indefinite strike on Friday, December 22, after the state government led by principal secretary R.Karikal Valaven assured the leaders of workers unions to meet their demands. For the last four days from December 18, the municipal workers organized as A.P. Municipal Workers and Employees Federation have led…

In the latest addition to our focus on the Bombay riots of 1993, we interview Meena Menon, author of Riots and After in Mumbai . Yogesh S speaks to Menon about the Bombay Riots and rise in inicidents of communal violence in the country in recent times. She asks, "is saying yes to the ruling government nationalism?" Listen…

Conversion is the argument being used by right wing mobs to attack Christians celebrating Christmas in the week leading up to the festival. In Madhya Pradesh a group of carol singers were beaten and their vehicle torched. Two days ago in Rajasthan a right wing fringe group disrupted a Christmas fair, with the participants running…

Image courtesy Global Thought Columbia University This year, the tenth Dr. Asghar Ali Engineer memorial lecture was delivered by Professor Akeel Bilgrami on 8 December, 2017, in the wake of the twenty fifth anniversary of the planned demolition of Babri Masjid and the beginning of the devastating Bombay riots. There could not have been a…

I have always believed that travelling is more rewarding than reading. Unless one travels the length and breadth of India, there is no way to understand the diversity that adorns her. It was not until I visited Tripura did I know that Kokborok is one of the official languages spoken by lakhs of people written…

Though Sainath cites many examples of banks actually helping the poor and downtrodden during those hard times, the general story in rural India was of despair, devastation and starvation. Republished from Newsclick First published by Mumbai Collective on YouTube

When I first heard Mahmood Mamdani, writer of Good Muslim Bad Muslim, Talk of Truth and Reconciliation and the South African Experiment, and the way in which it could be a model for other communities in conflict, I wondered how it could be applicable here in India. Then again in a talk at the Press Club in Mumbai, in 2009,…

In a development that signalises the growing isolation of the United States from the Israel-Palestine conflict, an overwhelming majority of United Nations members defied unprecedented threats by the US to declare President Donald Trump’s declaration of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital as “null and void.” The resolution was passed at a UN General Assembly emergency meeting…

On 11th December, 2017, one hundred artists wrote a letter rejecting Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, which appeared in The Guardian on 12th December, 2017. This move by Trump is a belligerent show of power and it paves way for further colonisation and occupation of Jerusalem by Israel. Jerusalem is not under…

In an interview with Indian Cultural Forum, Divya Bharathi, director of the movie Kakkoos, talks about the attack that her recent movie has come under; and the threats of rape and murder that she has received. The right wing forces, with the support of BJP, have called for a ban on the movie across Tamil Nadu….

The handloom sector, which employs over 6.5 million families, is the second largest cluster of labourers, after the agriculture sector. However, the recent policy-level and economic developments and changes by the government have been inconsiderate towards the weaver's needs and basic requirements for survival. In order to discuss these ongoing crisis of the handloom sector,…

SRINAGAR: Tensions are on the rise in Kashmir Valley following the killing of three civilians, allegedly by security forces during counterinsurgency operations, within a week, prompting violent anti-India and pro-freedom protests. The killing of two women in Shopian and Handwara, and a young driver in Kupwara district, has brought the Valley on the edge yet again…

The Congress has virtually swept the civic polls in BJP ruled Rajasthan. This despite the intense communalisation taking place in the state, that has been home to some of the worst cow mob lynchings of Muslims. And while Congress leader Sachin Pilot can take solace from the interpretation that the “countdown for the BJP in…

Haobam Paban Kumar is a filmmaker. His documentaries and shorts are stories of the mountain terrain reality and upheavals not found in the plains. One of his first feature length documentaries, Phum Shang (A Floating Life), is about a very special fishing community. In the north-eastern Indian state of Manipur, close to its border with…

Much before Akshay Kumar came forward with his greatly hyped Padman, two documentaries have already been made on this wonderful man who has turned the world of thousands of women who have suffered for years because of the taboo on women and menstruation around. Arunachalam Muruganantham, now 55, is a social entrepreneur from rural Coimbatore…

Image courtesy The Wire Jignesh Mevani does not believe in wasting time, and ever since the election results, he has been on a whirligig, meeting people, accepted congratulations but more importantly for him and Vadgam, focusing on real issues. His first act was to write to the District Collector of his district to fix the…

Following Gauri Lankesh’s brutal murder, there were protests everywhere. Now that we remember someone who had lived a successful and a complete life, now that we mourn her death, the only question that we should be asking is, what was Gauri’s purpose in life? Anti Hindu Rashtra Gauri firmly believed that it was her constitutional…

This essay has been extracted from The Historian and her Craft Collected Essays and Lectures of Romila Thapar recently published by the Oxford University Press and republished here with permission. Image courtesy The Indian Express The years after Independence saw a paradigm shift in history writing in India. Inspired by the ideals of nationalism, and the…

The state of Karnataka is now witnessing communal riots in the Uttara Kannada district. There is a Congress government in Karnataka. The increasing communal tensions in the state are being seen as a result of the carelessness of the regime. The ruling government, of course, has the power and resources to prevent and curb such…

In the latest addition to our series on film and politics, we have Ruth Vanita, Professor at University of Montana. Souradeep Roy of the Indian Cultural Forum speaks to Vanita on her book, Dancing with the Nation, which has just been brought out by Speaking Tiger Books. Has the figure of the courtesan or the tawaif been a…

Yogesh S (YS): You have translated various works written in Marathi before Smritichitre. How different was the experience of translating Smritichitre from that of translating other works? Each book that I have translated has been different from the one before. Each has presented its own set of challenges. The challenge common to all is finding a…

A crowd huddled near a narrow lane in South Delhi’s Khirkee extension as inquisitive on-lookers continued to join in. Inside a small basement, a pop-up studio for the ‘Khirkee Talk Show’ was being set-up. The talk show featured Lawrence, who is from Nigeria and a few other residents of Khirkee. Over piping hot cups of…

Hindutva, will be the plank of the BJP for the Karnataka Assembly elections early next year. A key party strategist told The Citizen, “Hindutva will be our main poll plank in Karnataka and we will win 150 of the total 224 seat under the leadership of B.S.Yeddyurappa.” The target is a minimum 150 seats with…

In the backdrop of the mysterious death of Paresh Mesta in Honnavara town of Karnataka’s Uttara Kannada district, members of Hindutva outfits have kept the district on a fore of communal violence. Rumours and lies around Mesta’s death that his dead body was found in a brutalised condition which later turned out to be false…

The Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment’s decided to re-introduce the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Bill, 2016 in it’s original form. 5 December 2017 On 19th November 2017, Shri Thawar Chand Gehlot, Union Minister for the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment (“MOSJE”) reportedly stated on the subject of The Transgender Persons (Protection of…

Image courtesy countercurrents.org Gujarat’s much awaited results are out. The fraudsters sitting in the mega “slaughterhouses” have been exposed and myth related to invincibility is broken and perhaps shaken the Hindutva camp from inside. These results will have a huge impact on the psyche of our nation and the fraudsters will start building up…

Three young men, who have shown leadership qualities beyond their years. Hardik Patel, Jignesh Mevani and Alpesh Thakor were the major players in this election, checking Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s juggernaut by placing obstacles that the big BJP players, and the media are still not willing to recognise. One, all three started their campaign far…

“Mamta and Anita, Dalit sisters of Iroli Gurjar village in Mathura district of Uttar Pradesh wait in the district courts for their kin, and a Pastor, to be released on bail. The Pastor and five others were beaten up on 4th December when a mob entered Mamta’s house where a prayer was in progress, and…

This essay was first published in The Afternoon Despatch and Courier through the Associated Press Features on 18 December, 1992, nearly twenty five years ago in the aftermath of the planned demolition of Babri Masjid. The Indian Cultural Forum is grateful to the author for sending us the hard copy of the article in print and for…

One It was an unfortunate evening — everything around had transformed into something else. He was just 19. He had dropped out of college to earn his living and had started to work with his elder brother and father in the port. That evening, he was prepared to observe the rituals that one observes before…

The following is an excerpt from the book Once There Was a City Named Dilli, written by Intizar Husain and originally published in Urdu as Dilli Tha Jiska Naam. The extract is from its English translation, by Ghazala Jamil and Faiz Ullah, published in 2017 by Yoda Press. A Hindi translation of the book, translated by Shubhum…

On 6 December, 2017, reports said that Donald Trump announced that the United States of America recognises Jerusalem to be the capital of Israel. Although Israel has made such a demand for a long time, it has never been accepted internationally. More than hundred Jewish studies scholars in the United States of America have condemned…

I thought Wednesday was going to be an easy day, a light day, a nice day—in short, a day I wouldn’t have to meet too many deadlines. But what do I find out the moment I step into office? “You’ve got to write a piece on the condom ad ban, man. Needs to go…

Image courtesy The Indian Express The twenty-fifth anniversary of the demolition of the Babri Masjid has reminded us once again that India is a bruised, battered and bleeding democracy. In the past three years, the country’s multi-cultural inheritance has been torn to shreds. Indians have been partitioned into Hindus and Others, and Hinduism has been…

The Indian Cultural Forum welcomes the Jharkhand government’s decision to not ban Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar’s book of short stories, The Adivasi Will Not Dance. The Telegraph has quoted Sarayu Roy, the Parliamentary Affairs Minister, saying that the ban on the book should be lifted soon. "He is a well-known author and a Sahitya Akademi Award…

A red stream of words cascaded along the screen announcing your untimely grim departure Your lifeless body splayed across the steps haunting every pair of eyes. I cannot help but wonder, Did you smell death lurking in the darkness of your porch Or did it spring upon you like the weather of Bangalore unpredictable and…

This is an epistolary response to the 2016 documentary, Ima Sabitri, by filmmaker Bobo Khuraijam. The film follows Ima Sabitri, a popular Manipuri stage actress, over the course of several months, and is a documentation of her life and her art. It was the opening film in the Indian Panorama section at the International Film Festival of…

Firoz Ashraf/ Image courtesy Meena Menon Twenty-five years after the Bombay riots, few people can look back with satisfaction, Firoz Ashraf is one of them. The change from a “mixed” cosmopolitan locality in Malad to a Muslim ghetto couldn’t have been more starkly felt in his flat in suburban Jogeshwari in Abba apartments. Yet…

Rituparno Ghosh remains one of the most outstanding filmmakers Indian cinema has produced in recent times. Sangeeta Datta’s documentary on this director Bird of Dusk (Sandhyar Pakhi) takes us into a flashback into this unique journey of this brilliant filmmaker. This film is currently doing the rounds of film festivals with a wonderful opening Who is…

A Muslim migrant labourer from Bengal was hacked to death and then set on fire, while a youngster was made to record the deeply distressing scene. In the end, the attacker issues a warning to Muslim men over "love jihad". It was then uploaded and circulated on social media. Protests were held in different parts…

After the recent murder of a dairy trader by cow vigilantes on the Rajasthan-Haryana border, 11 deaths have been reported in 2017, the highest toll from cow-related hate crimes since 2010, from when IndiaSpend’s database records hate crimes. The database is being launched in a new, interactive format today. Image courtesy Sabrang India[/caption] …

Image courtesy Outlook India To kill, and then burn a human being, are not new in our country. To brutally murder and then gloat about it is also not new. But today you can gloat about it on camera and make sure it goes viral on social media creating a horrific voyeuristic experience of violence…

We, the citizens of India, have been perturbed by the reports surrounding the death of CBI Judge B.H. Loya who was presiding over the trial of Sohrabuddin murder case. It is disturbing for us to note that other than multiple conflicting versions of the circumstances of Judge Loya’s death, there have been allegations of undue…

Image courtesy The Hindustan Times The demolition of Babri masjid on 6 December, 1992, witnessed an unleashing of horrific violence in its aftermath. Various places in the country suffered. Violence in Mumbai was the worst and qualitatively, it set a new low in the history of communal violence in India — iIt was most…

This is our eighth story for our #OctoberRevolutionSeries, a series we began in October to remember the centenary of the Russia Revolution. The first is an excerpt from Cecilia Bobrovskaya's memoirs; the second is from an essay by Prabir Purkayastha; the third is our inaugral bookend by Githa Hariharan on Sevtlana Alexievich's novel Second Hand Time; and the fourth is a conversation with Professor Sobhanlal…

It was 25 years ago, on 6th December, 1992, that the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya was demolished. Even though the incident took place over two decades back, the memory of it is still alive in people's minds. Newsclick brings you a glimpse of the resistance against communal hatred. Disclaimer: Title of the video is an…

Our story on what happened on the first day of the Bhopal Jan Utsav, organised by Indian Writers Forum and the Bhopal Collective (a collective of progressive organisations and movements like AIPSN, Delhi Science Forum, Bharatiya Gyan Vigyan Samiti and Jan Swasthya Abhiyan). Here, we have Subhashini Ali, Aruna Roy, Mallika Sarabhai, Bezwada Wilson and…

Like Padmavati, there is no historical evidence to suggest that there was Ram Temple at the site where Babri Masjid once stood. Today, on the 25th anniversary of the planned demolition of Babri Masjid, if we see the way the Padmavati controversy has raged over the last month, we will realise how little we have…

The city of Bhopal witnessed a unique Festival — a festival of diversity, reason and resistance—between 26th and 28th of November. Named as Bhopal Utsav, it was organised by various progressive organisations, collectives and movements between. The festival brought together activists from diverse movements, cultural activists, science activists and thousands of people from all…

This song is a tribute to Bangalore journalist, Gauri Lankesh, who was killed on 5 September 2017. The sheer brutality of the crime (she was shot 7 times), reflects the intolerance displayed by opposing thought. Her death got to all of us at some level because she was a citizen of Bangalore, known to all…

Naveen Gupta, a journalist working with Hindi daily Hindustan, was shot dead by three bikers in Bilhaur area of Kanpur. The claim of Uttar Pradesh’s Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath that he had made UP a ‘crime free’ state fell on its face on Thursday evening when a 38-year-old journalist was shot dead in Kanpur. According to Superintendent…

For people like me, who are involved in various struggles in Karnataka for the last thirty-five years, and have seen success sometimes and have been caught up in certain illusions in other instances, Gauri was a force which would interfere very often to either fight with us, or extend her solidarity. Her murder has disturbed…

There now remain very few people in the Hindi-speaking world who, in their personalities, carry the value of cultural diversity and whose language reflects truth, dignity and ethics as a beacon for our times. Kunwar Narain was one such individual and writer. His demise marks the loss of an individual of rare values, and the…

When I was invited to The Bhopal Jan Utsav, the first thought that came to my mind was of visiting Itarsi, a town that is a mere 2 hour-train journey away from Bhopal. It is one of the largest railway junctions in the country. Surrounded by forest areas, Itarsi has a large tribal population. I…

In the latest interview in our series #WritersTalkPolitics, Githa Hariharan talks to Perumal Murugan on the influence of folklore on his fiction; the complexities involved in writing about caste relations; and finally, on poetry. Poetry, Murugan says, gives him the refuge he needs whenever he needs to calm down. It is no coincidence that the first book after…

Contemporary poet and writer Perumal Murugan entered into a controversy when his Tamil book, Madhurobhagan (2010), translated into English as One Part Woman, was released in his home town, Namakkal, in Tamil Nadu. The fictional book portrays the sufferings of childless couple, particularly women, and it dealt with the lifestyle dating back to more than a…

I had known Gauri Lankesh for twenty five years. We spoke very little. We would speak only when there was some important issue to be discussed. She usually called late in the night, and we would talk for really long hours. Whenever we spoke, she would talk about the thoughts that were bothering her at…

This is our seventh story for our #OctoberRevolutionSeries, a series we began in October to remember the centenary of the Russia Revolution. The first is an excerpt from Cecilia Bobrovskaya's memoirs; the second is from an essay by Prabir Purkayastha; the third is our inaugral bookend by Githa Hariharan on Sevtlana Alexievich's novel Second Hand…

India’s farmers, through consistent protest and struggle, have finally got the central government to seriously contemplate the withdrawal of its notification banning the sale of cattle for slaughter. A date has reportedly not been fixed, but government sources informed the media that this notification issued by the Ministry of Environment will now be withdrawn….

On the 40th International Solidarity Day for the Palestinian People, Souradeep Roy of the Indian Cultural Forum and Apoorva Gautam of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions, India (BDS India) explain why asking bands to not perform in Israel is not an attack on freedom of speech and expression. They take Roger Waters example and his performance…

Bengaluru : Members of Rashtriya Rajput Karni Sena during a protest demanding for a total ban on Sanjay Leela Bhansali's movie &amp;quot;Padmavati' at Freedom Park in Bengaluru./ Image courtesy The Indian Express The past few months in India have been unexpectedly germane to the historian’s craft, promising an imminent adrenaline rush to the new…

Image courtesy gurumavin.com It is not enough to say that Jyotiba Phule was a great rationalist. We must specify the characterisation further by saying that he pioneered the method of the rational insult. It is not enough to locate contemporary figures such as Dhabolkar, Kalburgi, Gauri Lankesh, among others, in the tradition of critical…

The 25 year old Hadiya, who converted into Islam and sparked off a nation-wide debate on “Love Jihad”, will finally be allowed to present her side of the narrative in the Supreme Court today. Hadiya arrived in Delhi on Saturday. She has refuted the claim that she was forced into converting to Islam. A…

While protests related to Padmavati are creating headlines everywhere, very little attention has been paid to what has been happening to Punjabi writers. Two Punjabi writers have been subjected to harassment at the hands of the state and private institutions recently. One of them is Sahitya Akademi award winning senior writer Baldev Singh Sadaknama, a…

This is our sixth story for our #OctoberRevolutionSeries, a series we began in October to remember the centenary of the Russia Revolution. The first is an excerpt from Cecilia Bobrovskaya's memoirs; the second is from an essay by Prabir Purkayastha; the third is our inaugral bookend by Githa Hariharan on Sevtlana Alexievich's novel Second Hand…

Translator's Introduction Shanta Gokhale Lakshmibai Tilak’s Smritichitre is one of those books that constantly beckons you to re-read it. If not to re-read it in its entirety, at least to dip into it occasionally to meet an old friend. When such a book beckons a translator, she does not stop at re-reading, or re-re-reading. She…

First published by Yoda Press in 2005, Because I Have a Voice was one of the first anthologies of its kind, written by queer people, for queer people, in “words chosen by [them] to be part of a new language that speaks of change just as it steps towards it” (Narrain and Bhan 1). By…

It was in 2003 that I first saw Gauri from close quarters. She sat next to me in one of the programs in Bayalu Rangamandira and was speaking to someone over her mobile phone. I would not have liked anything about her back then. I learnt a great deal about her through my interactions with…

Bhopal Collective a group of progressive activists, scientists and artists, along with other progressive groups, are organising a three day event, the Festival of Resistance, to protest the unmaking of India and to celebrate its diversity. Indian Writers' Forum is one of the organisers of the Bhopal Jan Utsav. Different organisations and individuals, responding to a call by…

Image courtesy Gaylaxy 20 November is marked as International Transgender Day of Remembrance. It is a day to remember, mourn, and memorialise the victims of transphobia. The day was founded to commemorate the murder of Rita Hester a transgender woman in the USA. Now Transgender Day of Remembrance is commemorated across the world, reminding us…

Abstract: Twenty-five years back Geeta Kapur asked the question “When was Modernism in India?” and in response, located the Indian modernism in disjunction with the West, in a fractured temporality. Perhaps it’s time to revisit this question again not with the view of positioning it accurately in time and space, but instead to critically examine the…

The inagural session of the 6th edition of Bangalore Literature Festival 2017 was dedicated to Gauri Lankesh. Ammu Joseph, a journalist and an author based in Bangalore, along with Nimi Ravindran, Padmavati Rao and Kafeel Jafri recited poems dedicated to Gauri Lankesh. Watch the recital of these poems here: Read these poems here:…

This is our fifth story for our #OctoberRevolutionSeries, a series we began in October to remember the centenary of the Russia Revolution. The first is an excerpt from Cecilia Bobrovskaya's memoirs; the second is from an essay by Prabir Purkayastha; the third is our inaugral bookend by Githa Hariharan on Sevtlana Alexievich's…

In a letter dated 16 June 2017, The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) directed the People’s Union of Civil Liberties (Chhattisgarh) to make further inquiries into a complaint it had received regarding the looting and burning of huts and the killing of seven persons of Kondasawali, a village in district Sukma of Chhattisgarh. Sometime during…

In this interview with the Indian Cultural Forum, Sanjay Kak discusses the threat to freedom of expression in the undeclared state of emergency India is currently in and his book Witness, which is a collection of photographs by nine photographers from Kashmir.

Dakshinayan Abhiyan Goa takes strong exception to the decision taken by the Information and Broadcasting Ministry to exclude two films in the Panorama section by overriding the IFFI Jury’s prudent choice. A gross violation of the right to Freedom of Expression, we consider this act as an attempt to suppress creativity. As the festival is…

I once met a woman who makes savouries and snacks for weddings. She told me that while leaving at the end of the day after making large quantities of snacks like murukku and thenkuzhal, it is important not to look back. Apparently, looking back at all that you managed to cook in one day might…

There has been an increased interest around sexual harassment, especially in the academia, after a list of alleged harassers was circulated in social media. Keeping up with the discussions, we publish a few first person accounts by women who write of the experiences which led to their politicisation as feminists. It must have taken…

This is the third part of our roundtable with P Sainath, founder editor of the People's Archive of Rural India (PARI), about media and culture. Talking about the aim of PARI, Sainath says, "PARI is meant to be a living book written by one generation of students to the next." Watch all the three parts together here.

Over 50 well-known intellectuals, writers and artists have issued an open letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi demanding that his government at the Centre intervenes to resolve their basic demands. Among those who endorsed the letter were writers Krishna Sobti, K. Satchidanandan and Githa Hariharan; classical dancer and activist Mallika Sarabhai; Bezwada Wilson of the…

Once upon a time it is now. And in the now I want to tell you a story. Please do pay heed to this story. It is a real story with twists and turns. It has songs and dance. It has a tamasha (a traditional folk theatre show in Maharashtra, which includes dance and songs) and a powada…

Introduction Mother India (1957) completes sixty years this year. Produced and directed by Mehboob, famous for his social agenda films packaged with a lot of chutzpah, grandeur and melodrama, the film was assessed among the ten biggest hits in Indian cinema in the 20th century. Seventeen years into the 21st century and its memories remain…

Uday Mehta (UM): I think of you, especially in the essays that constitute this book, as doing a rather particular kind of philosophy. It is a very distinguished tradition of practitioners, including the late Richard Rorty, Bernard Williams, and Alasdair MacIntyre in the Anglo-American tradition; Michel Foucault, in the French tradition; Adorno and Walter Benjamin…

Cartoonist Bala was arrested from his residence in Chennai last Sunday, 5 November, 2017, for his cartoon that criticised the Tirunelveli Police Commissioner, the District Collector, and the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, over the Tirunelveli immolation tragedy. In protest against this curbing of freedom of speech and expression, the Indian Cultural Forum has decided to come out…

The National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM) organised a Yuva Samvad (A dialogue with the youth) from 3 to 6 November 2017. This three-day long congregation hosted youth activists, involved in various movements, from across the country. Youth activists from the Narmada Bachao Andolan, from farmers’ movements, representatives of people’s movements in Assam, trade…

The University Grants Commission (UGC) has taken a decision that may reduce the number of reserved seats for faculty appointments in universities. The decision, according to a report published in The Indian Express, is waiting for “concurrence” from the Ministry of Human Resource Development. The UGC took the decision after the Allahabad High Court cancelled…

I was preparing to leave Bangalore for three weeks when I got a call from a friend in Mumbai asking me to switch on the TV immediately, saying that Gauri had been shot. I though Gauri had gone driving off on one of her trips and been shot at. She had always received threats since…

In this interview with Sanjay Kak, Souradeep Roy discusses the making of Kak's documentary Red Ant Dream. The 2013 documentary was shot in Niyamgiri (in Odisha), Bastar (in Chattisgarh), and Punjab. This interview follows our article on Naxalite poetry by Moinak Biswas, as part of a series that looks at the Naxalbari uprising, which took…

My dear little sister, I have been thinking of writing to you for a long time. In truth, I had readied myself to write when I saw your first story published. But then I felt, this is your very first story, and when a story or a poem signed with a female name gets…

In this latest interview for our series Writers Talk Politics, Souradeep Roy talks to Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar, the writer and doctor, whose work includes a novel, The Mysterious Ailment of Rupi Baskey, and a collection of short stories, The Adivasi Will Not Dance. The Jharkhand government banned the latter book, calling it obscene. Shekhar, also…

Author’s Note My childhood and youth were spent in a remote village in Odisha’s Kalahandi district. My father was a schoolteacher and my mother was an educated housewife. Ours was a lower- middle-class family, which did not have to struggle for food, clothes, books, or stationery. We ate and dressed well and lived in a…

Is there a need to replace science with a small "s", with capital "S"? Satyajit Rath, in his conversation with Githa Hariharan, says that there is a greater need to reclaim a lived science, as communities around us often survive by acting on it. Watch the third part of the interview here:

Other Images The projected image of empowered women, however, seems to be starkly different from the treatment they receive in their own families and communities. This is not to say that women are without power in personal and public lives. But frequent incidences of violence against women (though this is not the only prism through…

I stand before you to accept an award for having contributed to national integration. But before I bask in its glory I need to place on record the unevenness or shall I say the un-integratedness of my own citizenship. I would like to believe that I am just another ordinary Indian. But I…

In the latest on our series on independent publishing in India, we speak to Nandini Dhar, co-founder and co-editor of Aainagar. It calls itself an "online little magazine", and its name has come from a song by Lalon Fakir: আমার বাড়ির কাছে আরশিনগর, তাতে এক পড়শি বসত করে। আমি একদিনও না দেখিলেম তারে (A neighbour dwells in the…

Krishan Chander’s Urdu novel, Ghaddaar, meaning ‘traitor’, begins with a delicately woven romance between an unmarried Muslim girl, and her married Hindu lover. But the world outside is being torn asunder and Krishan Chander shows how love, brotherhood and humanity swiftly turn into redundant emotions, as permanent lines are drawn between two nations. 'Traitor' is a word…

The reports in the mainstream media of incidents of rape or sexual harassment occurring within spaces of higher education in India have been few and far between as compared to the almost daily reports of incidents of rape and gendered violence occurring across the country. It is universally acknowledged that the actual cases…

In the latest interview for our series Theatre and Politics, Danish Husain speaks to Souradeep Roy on returning his Sankeet Natak Akademi award in 2015; the attack on Urdu; and his new work qissebaazi. Watch more from the series Theatre and Politics: “Censorship outside of the Censor Board is the problem in Maharashtra”: Rajeev Naik “It’s…

Privacy Matters. அகவுரிமை பாட்டு. मेरी निजता मेरा हक is a music video featuring Perumal Murugan, Shital Sathay, Sofia Ashraf & T M Krishna. This music video is inspired by the 24 August 2017 judgement of the Supreme Court of India on the Right to Privacy. The judgement reminds us of the constitutional provisions guaranteeing our right to choose what we wear,…

To offer my personal views on Adoor Gopalakrishnan, one of India’s finest filmmakers, a man who is always rooted to the milieu around him, seems like a rather difficult proposition. The moment it is done, I think, a template is provided to stag it. Since my knowledge of Adoor and his films contains a fraternal…

In this interview, produced by Newsclick and the Indian Writers' Forum, D. Raghunandan from the Delhi Science Forum talks to Narendra Nayak, President of the Federation of Indian Rationalist Associations (FIRA), about the recently implemented Anti-Superstition Bill in Karnataka. Even though it is a diluted version of proposed bill which was initially proposed, Narendra Nayak…

One memorable voice in Second-Hand Time remembers: “On the eve of the 1917 Revolution, Alexander Grin wrote, ‘And the future seems to have stopped standing in its proper place.’ Now, a hundred years later, the future is, once again, not where it ought to be. Our time comes to us second-hand.” Second-Hand Time. This…

While the world mourns the end of an era with Appaji leaving her mortal torso, I’m reminded of her frequent allusions to the Ganges — ‘Ganga ji’, as she would call her — as a metaphor for life, meandering through myriads of lands, and merging into the ocean only to re-emerge in a game of…

Addressing the media persons during a press meet held at Hotel Woodlands, Mangaluru on Saturday evening at 5pm, Professor Narendra Nayak — President, Federation of Indian Rationalist Associations, Mangaluru said, “An entity called “Smart Brainy” has been running a racket called as WBDP or whole brain development program in which they are allegedly balancing the…

Time present and time past Are both perhaps present in time future And time future contained in time past. … What might have been is an abstraction Remaining a perpetual possibility Only in a world of speculation. What might have been and what has been Point to one end, which is always present. Footfalls echo…

The Supreme Court of India refused to ban Samajika Smugglerlu Komatollu (Komatollu are Social Smugglers), a book by renowned dalit scholar Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd. Lawyer K V Veeranjaneyalu had filed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) asking the court to ban this book. The PIL argued that the book is demeaning and propagates hatred for a…

…With regard to educational and cultural institutions of all kinds, the plan is simple: put Sangh loyalists into positions of control and authority in each and every case. If the BJP is in power, appointments favourable for the party are made by the central or state governments. If they are not in power in a…

On 5 September, 2016, a Supreme Court bench of Justices Dipak Misra and Uday Lalit gave a direction that “the authorities while dealing with the offences under Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code shall be guided by the principles laid down by the Constitution Bench in Kedar Nath Singh vs. State of Bihar…

Some months back, I gave a literary friend some poems I had translated from Marathi. The poems were by FM Shahajinde (read some of the translations here). In some Marathi literary circles he is well known as a dalit Muslim poet. He writes in free verse and all his poems spring from his experiences. I’ve…

The so-called film fraternity of Mumbai and the state administration can breathe easy as one of the brigands of that Award Wapasi has been laid to rest for some time now. Kundan Shah would not have missed the irony in Narendra Modi’s sincere condolence message on Twitter: Anguished by the passing away of Shri Kundan…

The Mughal court became a site of cultural production in the early modern world. It was a curious confluence of "Islamicate" and "Indic" cultures. Like any other dynasty with the desire to rule, the Mughals, contrary to the present state-sponsored communal (mis)understanding, did not rupture the existing socio-cultural fabric of the land. Besides introducing Timurid and Mongoloid traditions,…

We continue our #OctoberRevolutionSeries with an interview with Professor Sobhanlal Datta Gupta, who has been reading the autobiographical writings of György Lukács, Rosa Luxemburg and Nikolai Bukharin. Their political writings have already been published, but Datta Gupta has been closely analysing their letters, diaries and notes. In a conversation with Sruti M D, he says that this…

Literary scholar and cultural activist Ganesh Devy opines that today, we need to find a new meaning of freedom. He states, “We need to collectively find out a new meaning of freedom from race, gender, theology, language, nation, economic class. This is far more challenging and difficult than the freedom which was spelled out by…

How are science and culture related? Have we abandoned science and scientific temper for an overtly 'elite' politics? Satyajit Rath, in conversation with Githa Hariharan, explains about the significance of reclaiming scientific temper for the general public. Also see the first part of the interview: “Scientific temper is what elite politics denies in our humanness…”

The first time I read anything written by Satish Chandra was in my second year of graduation. I think every history graduate has heard of (if not read) his two volumes of History of Medieval India. More popular was his NCERT textbook on Medieval India. The first article that I had read by him…

Culture is defined as a people’s way of life. In the words of Mahatma Gandhi “A nation’s culture resides in the heart and in the soul of its people”. India is the one land that all men desire to see and having seen once, would not share that glimpse with the globe at large….

Karthika Naïr was born in India, lives in Paris, and works as a dance producer and curator. She is the author of Bearings, a poetry collection; DESH: Memories, inherited, borrowed, invented, a dance diary; and The Honey Hunter/ Le Tigre de Miel, a children’s book illustrated by Joëlle Jolivet. Nair was the principal story writer and scriptwriter of…

Is Gundhar Naik home, I asked a woman scrubbing pots and pans outside the house next door. "Where have you come from, and what do you want here?" she demanded. I am a journalist from Khariar who has written stories about Gundhar in the past, I explained. I have come to find out how he…

A venture of the Adani group in Australia has stirred up a controversy. The Adani group, founded and chaired by an Indian billionaire businessman, Gautam Adani has sought a loan of 900 Million dollars from Australia. Adani is accused of illegal dealings, bribery, environmental and social devastation; corruption, fraud and money laundering in…

I have long been a fan of John Pilger’s work – it is well-researched, honest and powerful without being sensational. There is a dignity to his prose that I very much admire. In a lecture he gave at Columbia University, Pilger spoke of ‘censorship by omission’. In that lecture, Pilger pointed to the terrible omissions of Western…

This was in the 13th century. 5 centuries had passed since the marauding Vedantic forces led by Adi Shankaracharya had torn into the sanghas, monasteries and stupas of the Buddhist. Meanwhile, General Vijay Sen had risen in coup from the barracks of the last Pala kings of Bengal to deal the final staggering blow to the last Buddhist dynasty of the subcontinent. The Brahmins had…

One seldom hears any of the persons..saying, “Let us do something to change the Touchable Hindu.”- Dr. B. R Ambedkar. “Frankly Prashant, if I weren’t an exceptional student, I would have committed suicide long ago.” His statement chilled my bones; having been known him for years, I knew he was not given to exaggeration or…

Protesters in large number have gheraoed the headquarters of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) at Delhi’s Lodhi Road. They are demanding to know where Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) student Najeeb Ahmad is. Ahmad mysteriously disappeared from room number 106 of his Mahi Mandavi Hostel on October 15, 2016 after being allegedly physically assaulted…

… [I]n 1944, Nathuram Godse was arrested at Panchgani as he was hurrying towards Gandhiji carrying a knife. This statement has been made before the Justice Kapur Commission by the owner of Surati Lodge of Pune, Shri Manishankar Purohit. Shri B.D. Bhilare Guruji, ex-MLA of the Congress from Mahabaleshwar, who was present, has…